The Epic Film: Myth and History, Derek Elley [re-published 2014, originally published 1984]

The onset of the 21st century seemed to herald a revival in the epic genre in film. Large-budget “Sword-and-Sandal” movies of the early 2000s such as Gladiator and Troy, labelled “Neo-epic films” by cinema critics, have reinvigorated the genre. At the same time, a new blockbuster phenomenon in the shape of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series of films, padded with wall-to-wall distinguished British (and Commonwealth) actors, have extended the epic genre, and in the case of the ‘Rings’ cycle, given the flagging “Sword-and-Sorcery” sub-genre a new lease of life.

The author’s approach to his subject is a somewhat scholarly one, although the book also remains accessible purely on an entertainment level. Elley begins by making clear the distinction between the heroic and the epic … “heroes alone do not make an epic,” other ingredients especially the “all-important mythic quality” is needed to elevate the narrative to a higher plane, the ‘supra-human’ dimension. The author then proceeds to trace the transition from the epic in its original, literary form to its cinematic form.

The book concerns itself to a large extent with the type of epic film much in vogue in the fifties and sixties, drawn from the history and mythology of antiquity (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Mesopotamia). Right up front I’d have to say that I think that the author is inclined to take the genre a bit too seriously. The epic movie, in whatever phase or incarnation it takes, has been something difficult to be especially serious about! By definition the standard form of the epic has tended to be characterised by an indulgence in excess – grandiosity, vulgarity, basically everything 8XL in size! Mention the epic film and people often think of monumental Hollywood flicks like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and the like. Conspicuous consumption the order of the day, so much so so that it could be suggested that epic films should be primarily seen as a kind of parody of themselves.

The Epic Film spends a good deal of time examining another type of epic movie, the Continental Sword-and-Sandal variant of the species which further takes away from the serious side of the genre’s purpose. The Sword-and-Sandal as the book points out is also known in the trade as a Peplum movie (from the type of brief robe or tjunic worn by both sexes in them). The Peplum had its heyday between the late 1950s and the mid 1960, usually set in Ancient Greece or Rome and filmed at Cinecittà in Rome (for a time the world’s film studio of choice) and/or in the campagna in Italy or Spain. The elements of the genre are well-known and entirely formulaic: heroic but one-dimensional gladiatorial strongmen, a bevy of immaculately beautiful but defenceless heroines, a paper-thin storyline appallingly scripted and only coincidentally unrecognisable as history, incoherently edited, low budgets, sloppily shot with atrociously wooden acting and haphazardly dubbed into English.

Footnote: the popularity of the Italian Peplum provided career change opportunities for body builders as many would-be actors like Steve Reeves, Mark Forest and Kirk Morris, made the transition from the bodybuilding game to become leads in Sword-and-Sandal sagas. Interestingly, many of the Italian musclemen-stars took Anglo-sounding names in an attempt to make them more appealing to the American market, thus the well-known Sergio Ciani became on screen the aptly named “Alan Steel”.

Steve Reeves’ phenomenally successful Labors of Hercules (1957) was the springboard for a spate of strongman-centred Pepla. From the mid sixties a number of the Peplum strongmen made the switch to Spaghetti Westerns which spectacularly filled the void when the popularity of the Sword and Sandal costumers began to wane. Spaghetti Westerns utilised the same device of giving its Italian stars American-sounding names, the most famous of which were the ‘Trinity’ duo, Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.

Whilst acknowledging the limitations of many of these B-grade epics Elley soberly proceeds to unearth all manner of meaningful cinematic aesthetics from the likes of Samson against the Moon Men, Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon, etc, etc. The author describes his text somewhat grandly as an extended essay on defining “the epic form in its filmic context”. The definition in the book that took my eye is attributed to Charlton Heston, “There’s a temptingly simple definition of the epic film: It’s the easiest kind of picture to make badly” (Chuck should have known – he appeared in his fair share of dud epics in his career).

Elley points out that spectacle is the most characteristic trademark of the epic genre, and that trait is (or was) synonymous with Hollywood. Although we connect the Pepla of that era with Italy and the Continent, we tend to associate the wider phenomenon of epics with America. The author quotes Peter Ustinov to good effect: “I’ve always thought that only the Americans can do Ancient Rome pictures. Both cultures have the same kind of relaxed, rangy pomp. Both have exactly the same kind of bad taste”.

The book is adorned with some 88 pictures in glorious black-and-white and these may hold for some readers the greatest interest. Amongst these is a still from the 1964 movie The Fall of the Roman Empire, a long range shot of a Late Roman frontier fortress under attack – complete with a modern Italian villa and two parked fiats close by in the background. Another revealing picture contains a close-up of the cleft-chinned Kirk Douglas as the fabled Ulysses, his heroic countenance somewhat spoiled by the clearly visible but unsightly appearance of Kirk’s varicose veins! Or equally entertaining, is the photo of Victor Mature as Samson, teeth gritted, valiantly wrestling a ‘savage’ lion which has the look of having been recently rejected by a local LA taxidermist.

Many of the era’s epic films that came out of Hollywood tend to be prone to snatches of excruciatingly bad dialogue. The book provides a wealth of atrocious quotes from the genre. Savour if you will these little vignettes which run the gamut from overblown dramatic(sic) intensity to inane absurdity:

“When you speak of destiny, this is something I must at last believe” (delivered with exaggerated emphasis), Genghis Khan, in Genghis Khan (1965).

“Love and hate are horns on the same goat”, Rune woman, in The Vikings (1958).

“At one time, when you were a little fella, you were always asking questions!”, Joseph, to Jesus, in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

This last line of dialogue, tinged with more than a touch of folksy mid-western Americanism, could easily have rolled from the mouth of failed actor-turned-US president, Ronnie Reagan, whilst whittling wood on the back-step of his Californian ranch.

By focussing on 50s and 60s Hollywood and Italian epics Elley largely neglects the first resurgence of the Sword-and-Sorcery film which took place in the late 70s and early 80s … the Star Wars cycle, Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, etc (all made before The Epic Film‘s original publication in 1984). Other (admittedly minor) sub-genres of the epic such as the Sinbad saga films (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, and so on) and the Swashbuckler/Pirate films don’t get a guernsey at all … although the Sinbad movies could just as well be categorised as adventure-fantasy films, rather than strictly Sword-and-Sorcery ones.

Elley’s study of the epic film genre is informative and instructive in so far as it goes. Ancient Greeks and Romans, Biblical figures, barbarians and Norsemen, all get a good run, but Elley’s historical survey cuts off at the end of the Dark Ages. I’m left with a tinge of regret that he didn’t take a more expansive approach in the book to include the grand and occasionally grandiloquent epic movies made about legendary Britons of a later era like Arthur and Robin Hood, as well as the more modern epics like Lawrence of Arabia or Dr Zhivago and even extend it to examples of the genre as diverse as 2001 a Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes.

Shorthand forms of poetry have maintained their widespread popularity up to the present, especially when contrasted with denser, seemingly impenetrable types of formal, academic poetry. This can be seen in contemporary verse forms like ‘Shrink Lit’ and the modern haiku poem, as it can in older, informal verse genres such as the epigram, the limerick, nonsense verse and the clerihew.

The limerick’s Irish genesis can be traced back to the 18th century and the Maigue Poets of County Limerick. Structurally, the limerick uses a stanza of five lines with a strict rhyme scheme of AA-BB-A. It embodies the spirit of nonsense verse and the modern variant sometimes tends to use obscene themes for humorous intent. Limericks have also been a vehicle for popular children’s nursery rhymes – eg, Old Mother Hubbard, Little Miss Muffet, Hickory Dickory Dock, Jack-and-Jill, etc. etc.

The best-known serial exponent of the limerick was Edward Lear who popularised it in A Book of Nonsense in the mid 19th century (although he himself did not use the term ‘limerick’). Lear’s limericks contain an inherently circular logic to them …. a typical, absurdly inane example of his limericks is:

There was a Young Person of Smyrna
Whose grandmother threatened to burn her.
But she seized on the cat,
And said “Granny, burn that!
You incongruous old woman of Smyrna.”

The clerihew has also been a popular verse-style with its emphasis on simplicity of form and use of whimsical themes. It’s inventor, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, began penning verses using the eponymous device as a schoolboy. One of Bentley’s most celebrated clerihews goes:

As demonstrated, a clerihew is a form of light verse usually consisting of two couplets (four lines), with lines of uneven length and irregular metre, the first line usually containing the name of a famous or well-known person [www.dictionary.com]. It employs a specific rhyme scheme, AA-BB, and it’s intent is humorous or possibly gently chiding. Less charitably the clerihew has elsewhere been described as “rhyming doggerel”.

Alice in WonderlandAnother of Bentley’s playful clerihews has fun with the author of the brace of universally popular Victorian classic books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass:

Lewis Carroll
Bought sumptuous apparel
And built an enormous palace
Out of the profits of Alice.

Of Ivanhoe author Sir Walter Scott, Bentley wrote:

I believe it was admitted by ScottThat some of his novels were rot.
How different was he from Lytton
Who admired everything he had written!

Cecil B. de Mille,
Rather against his will,
Was persuaded to leave Moses
Out of “The War of the Roses.”

Over the decades a number of famous writers have turned their hand to composing clerihews including GK Chesterton and WH Auden. Auden’s interest was engaged sufficiently to publish a collection of clerihews in a book called Academic Graffiti – a couple of his best efforts are:

Henry Adams
Was mortally afraid of Madams:
In a disorderly house
He sat quiet as a mouse.

Louis Pasteur,
So his colleagues aver,
Lived on excellent terms
With most of his germs.

Footnote: the clerihew, despite (or very possibly because of) its juvenile shallowness and nonsensical nature, has had an ongoing relevance as a teaching tool in engaging primary schoolchildren in the art of poetry-writing.

The Haiku Society of America defines the haiku as “a short poem that uses imagistic language to convey the essence of an experience of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition”. In English it’s structure consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively (17 syllables in all).

The modern haiku has struck a cord in America more than anywhere else, though a great many of the experimenters in this form have tended to not adhere to the established 17 syllable/three line criteria. Outstanding US poets and writers who have dabbled in the haiku include illuminati like Robert Frost, ee cumings, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright and Wallace Stevens, and a swag of the leading 50s and 60s beat poets including those Beat Generation icons Kerouac and Ginsburg.

In its modern, western incarnation, the haiku has had no greater recent proponent of the genre than David M Bader. The NYC attorney turned haiku humorist, had the Western Canon of literature firmly in his sights in a book first published in the mid-2000s as Haiku U: From Aristotle to Zola, 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables.

Moby Dick, American fiction’s time-honoured classic of the ultimate fight to the death between man and cetacean, is given a contemporary, environmental twist by Bader:

Vengeance! Black blood! Aye!
Doubloons to him that harpoons
the Greenpeace dinghy.

Homer’s ancient classic Odyssey (all 24 books) is hilariously condensed into the form of an unfavourable weather bureau forecast:

Aegean forecast –
storms, chance of one-eyed giants,
delays expected.

Similarly, Bader’s makeover of Jane Austen’s seminal novel of English manners Pride and Prejudice strips it back to reveal the appearance of a newspaper classified:

Bader’s take on Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a triumph of ubër-alliteration. With a clever play-on-words he economically ‘nails’ the odious persona of Humbert Humbert in 17 syllables:

Lecherous linguist –
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.

Bader also produced an earlier book [Haikus for Jews: For You, a Little Wisdom] in which he set down examples of distinctively Jewish Haiku – characterised in the main by recourse to a self-deprecating and at times a downbeat, cynical brand of humour.
Five thousand years a
wandering people – then we
found the cabanas.

“Through the Red Sea
costs extra.” Israeli movers
overcharge Moses.

Jewish triathlon — gin rummy, then contract bridge,
followed by a nap.